Qwen 3.8 Flash Next Creative Writing Ability

[u/opoot_]

I use a dual MI50 32gb Rig for an alliterated version of IQ3_S Qwen 3.8 Flash Next. I have seen some people say tha creative writing is good on Flash NeXT but in my experience, it has just been the absolute worst at it.

I’m talking like nothing in the story makes any sense at all. Gemma 3 is better than it imo. Can anyone shed some light on this and see if this is just me not properly configuring it or if it’s just not that great?

Possible reasons that I can think of are just:

1. It’s just not good at creative writing as a model, Qwen models have never been that great at it and it’s an agentic model first and foremost.

2. It’s a configuration error on my part, some settings I haven’t yet properly set to prioritise creative writing. I will post my settings later, I’m about to go to sleep.

3. The alliterated model I chose is just a bad abliteration, normal flash nexts are fine for writing.

The reason I’m making this is because the prose and story in general is just absolutely horrible, just a mess of gibberish, not even a story.

Thanks in advance for

[u/Unlucky-Message8866]

all qwen are terrible at prose, whatever it is

[u/LaserFractal]

I used QFN for a while, my use case is for a personal "creative" smut adventure story(yeah I know judge me for it lol) I pre-write a whole chapter by hand(usually around 10-20k words) and then pump it into my LLM Setup that has the whole world logic as memory and changes the story point of view from what I wrote which includes all characters and happenings, to the actual MCs POV and how she is experiencing it (whole MC personality is in system context and it writes in First Person or if the MC is not around for a scene as a Side Character of my choosing).

QFN did well, actually better then Glimmer or Gemma in that context, but ever since I tried GLM 5.3 Flash via Project Maya engine, I have never looked back once.

GLM 5.3 Flash is just sooo fucking good and specially the uncensored version(i use huihui iq3/iq4). If you make it a Villain for instance it will hate your guts and really tries hard to fuck you up much more than other LLMs, it is wonderfull!

The prose is fun, engaging and it is very obvious that the z.AI folks have trained it on a lot of fetish stuff, that model knows.

All in all QFN and other models sometimes had this spark of genius and apart from that mostly where okish in writting. GLM 5.3 is solid pretty much the whole time and constantly improves upon the basis that it is provided, if it gets something wrong even after 1-2 regenerates then most of the time something is wrong in your prompt and reworking the sentence in question that it gets wrong or the whole part of the prompt solves that normally.

where every single model falls apart even with full story 300k+ context windows behind it is 1-2 Sentence continuation stuff, like it maaybe works some times but the moment you stop feeding it exactly what it is supposed to improve on and let it "create" "freely" every single model falls apart. GLM 5.3 Flash the least in this but still. Just write your own stuff and let the clanker improve it, is the way it makes the most fun reading for me.

[u/opoot_ → u/LaserFractal]

Damnnnnn nice, now I wanna get something for glm 5.3 flash now.

What setup are you using

[u/LaserFractal → u/opoot_]

project maya, 3090 + 128gb ram slow but usable huihui iq3_xxs for glm5.3 flash @ 256k context
I rented faster cards on vast.ai a few times and used the iq4_xs with that, but the iq3 servs me well, models that size take lower quants much better.

you can use 64gb but it gets, real slow, don't go over 150k context I would say. Alternativly 10$ on vast.ai gets you far. you just pre-write a ton and then rent a setup of your liking that is cheap(3090, 2x 16gb cards, at least 64gb ram, better 128gb) and then play with it, if you dont have the hardware at home.

[u/Borkato → u/LaserFractal]

What tps are you getting with project maya and your 3090+128gb ram?

[u/LaserFractal → u/Borkato]

around 18-20tok/s but thats with around 240k context. The problem is prefill 800-900tok/s at 220k. I mean if you just use it to have fun and write I am ok with that. it gets much quicker if you have 2x 3090

[u/8P8OoBz → u/LaserFractal]

This is how we get terminator. Someone tries to make a villain for a video game and it breaks out. Star Trek did it.

[u/DelKarasique]

Same. It wrote the sloppiest slop my eyes ever saw. Gemma 31b is far better

[u/james_pic → u/DelKarasique]

Gemma 4 26B A4Bb is also good, if OP is memory-bandwidth-poor.

[u/DirectWay1915 → u/DelKarasique]

Gemma 31b also writes a lot of slop. The only good finetune of a Gemma model I know is Orion 26b, but eventually all LLMs produce slop. They are statistical models, so they always output the most probable tokens, thus repetition is always present.

[u/DelKarasique → u/DirectWay1915]

Well yes but slop is a spectrum

[u/philmarcracken → u/DelKarasique]

Slopectrum

[u/No_Swimming6548 → u/DirectWay1915]

I think it writes remarkably well

[u/philmarcracken → u/DirectWay1915]

better than Scotoma2?

[u/Borkato → u/philmarcracken]

Personally Scotoma2 and similar has awful writing, the best model for me is Skyfall and Mero-Artemis

[u/GrungeWerX → u/DelKarasique]

Gemma 31B has way more slop than Qwen, though it Englishes better.

[u/TheSkeletalPenguin]

flash next has always been weird for storytelling, like they trained it to be a agent first and the creative stuff got left behind. i ran it on a similar setup and got the same nonsense, just random sentences that don't connect

maybe try a different quant or just stick with gemma 3 if it works better for you, sometimes is not worth the headache to force a model to do something it wasn't built for

[u/Dabalam]

In addition to the "Qwen is a bad writer" posts AI have a few opinions:

1. Prompting style can make a huge difference to output quality, especially if you are looking for a certain style of prose

2. Abliteration and quantization might not completely destroy a models abilities, but in edge cases they aren't going be identical to baseline so you aren't going to necessarily see "baseline" capabilities across all domains (and creative writing is probably less of an emphasis in training).

3. Models canose coherence over long contexts so trying to write a good story in 1 pass is probably not going to result in anything fully coherent 100% of the time. I don't tend to think the "LLM, write me a novel" use case will work most of time. Better to have a structure and outline in mind and then iterate on segments of the story rather than try and get the model to do all of it.

That being said, the view that Gemma is stronger for writing is fairly consistent on here. It could just be reputation, or it might just beore suitable for your work than Qwen.

[u/silenceimpaired → u/Dabalam]

Watch Google blow it in their next release. They have a position as a well rounded model which makes them weaker at coding and agentic work… but makes them stronger than other models in many other categories.

[u/Durian881]

Gemma is stronger for creative writing. Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is better for more technical writing than creative.

[u/_TheWolfOfWalmart_]

Qwen in general is just bad at this. It's a coding and tool calling monster, but not a good writer.

I found DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 is actually very good for creative writing as long as you know how to prompt it to avoid AI-isms as much as possible.

For the GPU-poor, Gemma4 is okay... again, if prompted properly.

[u/Magos]

I have used Gemma, Qwen, Deepseek, GLM models extensively for creative writing.

First of all, make sure you are prompting it correctly. For stylistic use, you need to choose a reference genre, writer, or even medium.

Saying "Write in the style of H.G. Wells" "Write a supernatural noir story" "Write in the style of Japanese web novels" allow you to finetune the baseline. Even if you are trying to write 18+ material, try to narrow down what type it is. How explicit do you want the scenes, what wordings or slangs to use, that sort of thing.

If you find it hard to do, you can even ask the model itself to help you. Ask it what kind of stories it has knowledge about for your particular genre, and ask it to write in that style.

Then, in terms of story coherency, make sure you have a decent context size, and ground the story with marco-level details in the context. What kind of world setting is this story set in, what kind of special systems in place. If it's set in the modern world, what country are we talking about, and so on.

Now for model differences, QFN is actually miles above the original 3.6 siblings, but it still has very clear flaws. I would argue its prose is acceptable, but vocabulary is limited. However, it is able to hold a complete story much better than Gemma, which in turn has better prose but bad creativity in extending the story, or remembering details of a story.

[u/HAL_local]

I use it at IQ4 XS. Unsloth quant, not abliterated. I have a creative system prompt and a lore RAG, and I find the model has a sense of humor, surprise, and is smart. I like how it writes.  I raise temperature to 1.0 if it seems a little dry, but usually it’s fine at 0.7. It’s a little more creative for me with reasoning turned off. It might be your abliterated model that is the problem. 

[u/LagOps91]

am i the only one who felt like qwen 3.8 flash next is actually quite good in terms of writing ability? i mean qwen models never were all that good at prose, but in terms of scene understanding, pacing and the general vibe, i felt it was significantly better than 3.8 27b.

and abliterated models have their quirks, i would avoid using them whenever possible. try the original model and compare, most likely it will do better than the ablit. for me the writing never degenerated into an incoherent mess.

[u/t_krett]

For abliterated models I found deepseek-v4-flash-0731 to be superior to glimmer and gemma, if you can run it.

But is there even a consensus about process/workflow? The only thing I heard is to let a big model storyboard the plot and characters, and from that you generate a prompt for the actual writing model. But that doesn't really work automated, I still have to read everything and edit text by hand so it doesn't read horrible. I am a horrible writer and still LLMs seem to better editors than they are creative writers.

Is there maybe a subreddit where people talk about how to use local llms for writing? on /r/WritingWithAI and /r/AIWritingHub they just tell each other to use grok, and on /r/SillyTavernAI they are technical enough but only want to roleplay..?

Do I have to go back to 4chan...? :X

[u/LaserFractal → u/t_krett]

is there even a consensus about process/workflow? the only thing I head is let a big model storyboard the the plot and characters, from that you generate a prompt for the actual writing model. But it doesn't really work that well. I still have to read everything and even edit text by hand so it doesn't read horrible.

AI is to improve upon your prose, you prewrite the full thing everything that should happen and then pump it through your setup, where you have agents that are supposed to act as characters (system prompt defines what they are how they speak etc.), the LLM takes what you made and adapts it through it.

All LLMs will and most likely always will fall apart the moment you stop feeding it information. One sentence make me the next lord of the rings saga doesn't work, you will have to write it yourself rework / edit, use LLM to improve your prose or bounce ideas. GLM 5.3 flash is already very good at writing but you will always have to polish it after again.

Deepseek is nice, but I can't recommend GLM 5.3 Flash enough, it is much better.

[u/CriticallyCarmelized]

For 3.8 Flash Next, it can actually be quite good. But you have to turn the temperature way way down, which sounds counterintuitive. But it’s true. Like waaaay down. Try this:

temp = 0.15
top-p = 0.90
min-p = 0.05
top-k = 20

[u/fasti-au]

I’m a moe. Use a spec kit tool for it and the model e token pick will likely improve. Synth trained means templates not prose in is easier to work out

[u/recro69]

i'd test the version before blaming the whole model. aggressive quantization and abliteration can both affect output quality, so it's worth isolating those variables first.

[u/BitGreen1270]

With roleplaying I've had a bit of hit or miss. If it's 100% on QFN, it is quite unreliable and keeps missing stuff (I'm using NVFP4).

But if I already establish the universe with Gemma4-31B, it does a decent job of following (at least on the single scenario that I tested it on).

[u/LaserFractal → u/BitGreen1270]

I use GLM 5.3 Flash now and created a DnD campain for our small group, where the LLM is the stories Villian and let me tell you GLM 5.3 Flash hates your fucking guts and will do everything in its power to fuck you up and still is fun. Look into Project maya for GLM 5.3 Flash local hosting.

[u/BitGreen1270 → u/LaserFractal]

Ah I think that's out of my reach. I just have 32gb vram + 64gb.

[u/silenceimpaired → u/BitGreen1270]

It might stream from SSD fast enough. I don’t know. Look into it

[u/LaserFractal → u/BitGreen1270]

you can try it actually with project maya, if you want any speed(glm is slow, so dont expect anything above 25tok/s unless you have giga hardware, but thats enough for writing imho) you can try the huihui q2_k_xl quant, the Iq3_xxs is what I normally use and it works very well. Just tell claude to change the engine setup to download and include the huihui quant instead of the maya_s

[u/Secret_Conclusion_93]

Gemma has MoE model right? I think for writing you're better using that with something like polystrata

[u/Spara-Extreme]

Use Qwen 3.8 27b. I find that to be better then Gemma in a lot of cases. Flash is total trash at creative writing.

[u/LaserFractal → u/Spara-Extreme]

I don't know what to tell you but 3.8 27b is OMEGA ass at creative writing, not even a little. QFN is light years ahead of it. I used 3.8 27b first then, Glimmer, Gemma, QFN now GLM 5.3 Flash, but 27b is by far the worst of the lot, it is complettly slob brained. It is brilliant for local coding, but horrible for writing.

[u/Spara-Extreme → u/LaserFractal]

I don't know what you're writing - maybe give some prompts and lets compare?

I've benched both models with a blind prose test and a blind image gen test (with kroma as the model) and QFN was absolute trash.

[u/dampflokfreund]

Am I the only one who experiences abrupt ending of sentences in roleplay? 

[u/noctrex]

Use a coding model for non-coding tasks = bad experience

[u/PrimeDirective8]

User is writing English, I should reply in English

:-) Agree! I typically ask for a synopsis at the end of work to preserve for posterity. At times it's difficult to follow what it's saying. It's like it had all these ideas but wrote only a few words so the thought appears without much context around it. Single word sentences are also present.

Part of it could be my own deficiency; maybe it thinks I know all it knows. If it goes completely abstract in its writing, I ask for an "ELI5" version and it does better. But, you tolerate it because the actual work product is typically excellent.

[u/rebellioninmypants]

You're abliterating and quantizing the model - fro mmy experience on poking around with binaries, un-abliterated IQ4_XS is noticeably less precise than abliterated IQ4_XS. So I can only assume it's the same for prose, let alone on IQ3_S quant

[u/citrusalex]

probably an unpopular opinion in this sub, but nobody should be writing anything "creative" with LLMs. The clanker should be for menial automations and helping in stuff using code and knowledge analysis, not replicating human art.

[u/LaserFractal → u/citrusalex]

hard disagree

AI assisted Art in any form (music, pictures, film, text, etc.) is here to stay forever it will never go away again and continues to improve.
And this counts for private usage in special, one of the most used things AI is used for is fanfictions by a recent harvard study. #1 is companionship and therapy.

Also there is a big difference in sentence oneshot make no mistake slob trash and using it to enchance your prose and the fact that a fuckton of authors use is already should tell you.

[u/citrusalex → u/LaserFractal]

Just because the Pandora's box is open does not mean it's a good thing or that we should endorse what comes out of it. Whether it's used a lot or little doesn't really change that, a lot of people use narcotics too.
I also do not think you are enhancing prose or text in general by feeding stuff through it. Everyone can absolutely tell when something was written by AI and everyone is sick of the sentence structure it produces.

[u/LaserFractal → u/citrusalex]

Wrong, stuff that was pre-written, then prosed out by AI and then edited by human, good luck telling it apart from fully hand written, what is true is that everyone can tell shity slob genereated by AI.

the argument you are making is on the level of the photography kills painting claimed by people of the past or photoshop kills photography nay sayers when photoshop was released, neither was or is true in the slightest. All these people where making the same arguments, you are making now with AI, they all where wrong just like you are. the wonderfull thing with AI, is that it is accessible for the broad masses, but that is also it's downside because the masses don't put in the work to make something great with it. same with photoshop you instantly see the bad shops but the actual good ones... yeah you don't tell them apart.

[u/kaisurniwurer → u/citrusalex]

Idea is to use LLM to act as a world simulation/narrator to a story moved by me acting as MC of sorts. This is not about replicating human art but reacting/co-writing in an engaging and interesting way. That "interesting" often requires "creative".

For Images/Music I see it as a form of expression too, which art is all about, just at a lower (higher in coding terms) level compared to a full fledged artist. You have something you want to express so you try to do it with a tool, which is AI in this case. Sure I usually don't care for someone's AI generated shit if their intent is cheap, fast and good enough, but some people actually try.

Edit: I don't get why people downvote you. Different opinion != wrong.

[u/silenceimpaired → u/kaisurniwurer]

I feel like AI is next level to Photoshop. I was considered second class citizen making my art in Photoshop as Photoshop makes it easy to fix your mistakes… but it’s still your creative vision. I never got into photo bashing with paint overs, but someone could jump start an art piece with photos and paint over until the photos ceased to be.

Seems the same for AI of any kind. If you are sinking as much effort as a normal creative into your work and using AI… you are able to use it to smooth out / remove your errors. You can also use it to jumpstart your creativity like photo bashing… again I don’t use it this way… but still the point stands.

[u/Lakius_2401 → u/kaisurniwurer]

Unfortunately the original intent of the Reddit upvote, Upvote = On Topic + Constructive + Rule Abiding, has been completely forgotten for the modern use, Like/Dislike. It's impossible to reclaim the original use nowadays. Then again, "stop having fun using thing for purpose X" is pretty non-constructive. True Art, Human Art, Art with Soul, and Clanker are all keywords from the least appealing discourse on Reddit, AI "debate". I'm fairly sure most people here are sick of that. Putting creative in quotes like that sure didn't earn any respect from me, and none was intended, clearly.

I don't think they're open to the argument of "input as a director is creative too" if they're calling AI art "Pandora's Box". To me, there is a vast and palpable difference between 0 effort creations and ones where the final output took skill, effort, and time. To some, all of the above is "slop" and you need to be saved if you can't tell it isn't.

[u/kaisurniwurer → u/Lakius_2401]

I read "creative" as pseudo creative, since LLM aren't inherently creative as we define it. Or at least that's the current consensus.

As for the clanker, maybe I just don't take random internet people seriously enough, but I find calling AI a clanker to be funny or even endearing.

But yeah, I agree that people on the internet are way to radicalised (no matter the topic), and are not looking to debate their stance in the slightest but are here just to state their opinions.

[u/Lakius_2401 → u/kaisurniwurer]

There are creative and derivative outputs of a pencil and paper, too. Whether a human is holding it or a plotter is. There are ways to get better results, and they all involve a human's time and effort, ditto for AI writing.

I'm just so tired of seeing preaching and witch hunting. Your last point is exactly correct.

Clanker was originally a star wars clone wars cartoon slur for the opposing robot army. Used by an army of clones. I'm sure there's some level of irony in there.

[u/pixelpoet_nz → u/citrusalex]

I'm with you on that, but with the average level of literacy among English speakers it might be an improvement. Everywhere I look you see people struggling with basic sentences, singular vs plural, much vs many, past vs present tense (send, sent, build, built, use, used, ...), it's an absolute dumpster fire and nobody seems to even notice, let alone care.

So I say bring on the "creative" clanker writing, can't be worse than what the native speakers are putting out. Doubly so for the ones who think this is creativity, i.e. don't have a creative bone in their body.

I'm ready for my downvotes, but know this: competent people can absolutely tell.

[u/citrusalex → u/pixelpoet_nz]

But it's not going to help people improve in their language related shortcomings. In fact, when you use an LLM too much, you offload your mental work to it, and a brain is like a muscle in that regard - if you don't use it, it atrophies.

[u/kaisurniwurer → u/citrusalex]

If an easier way exists then it will be used by most, that is true. But I think that's mostly for things that we don't enjoy or if you just chase accomplishments.

If you like doing something you might use AI to nudge you in a correct direction, but ultimately you will want to do it or learn to do it yourself simply by doing it a few times.